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Soyer’s Receipt to Cook Salt Meat Eor Fifty Men

A large batch of salted meat boiled with optional vegetables and served with broken biscuit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lentils match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 135 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soyer’s Receipt to Cook Salt Meat Eor Fifty Men

serves 50 men

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Put 50 lbs. of salt meat in a large boiler.

  2. Fill the boiler with water and let the meat soak overnight.

  3. The next morning, wash the meat well.

  4. Fill with fresh water and boil gently for three hours.

  5. Skim off the fat.

Add optional items

  1. For salt pork, follow the same method or boil half beef and half pork.

  2. Add dumplings to either pork or beef if desired.

  3. Use soaked pork liquor to make soup.

  4. Introduce large yellow peas for improvement.

  5. Soak French haricot beans and lentils for use.

Make the pea mixture and serve

  1. Simmer 5 lbs. of split peas, ½ lb. of brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of pepper, and 10 onions until pulpy. Remove the fat.

  2. Serve with broken biscuit.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beans + lentilstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lentils + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peas + lentilstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salt meat
Supplies the main savoury flavour and body of the broth as it simmers.
Split peas
Break down into a pulpy mass that thickens and gives the dish its body.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth to the pulp.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt in the cured meat.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt meat overnight. Salt meat is heavily cured, and soaking draws out surface salt before boiling. Skipping or shortening the soak leaves the broth and meat much too salty.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pork, beans, lentils, sugar, pepper, onion):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pork, beans, lentils, sugar, pepper, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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